“Sky Masters 1959.11.22” (k046)

Kirby worked in syndicated newspapers strips a few times in his career, some published strips and several other proposals. The most successful was the science fiction strip Sky Masters of the Space Force, which lasted for two and a half years as a daily strip, from September 1958 to February 1961 (between the first orbital satellites and the first manned space flights). There was also a Sunday version, which ran for one year, from February 1959 to February 1960. This strip is from Nov 22, 1959, probably written by some combination of Kirby, Dave Wood and Dick Wood and inked by Dick Ayers.

While some of the adventures of Major Sky Masters would take place in space, where we quickly go from the first space flights to a manned space station to the moon, a lot of them are set on Earth, with stories about the training for space flights, and various espionage schemes which have to be broken up. That’s the case in this storyline, as Sky have to pursue a stolen gyroscope right into a storm. These storylines make for a decent conventional action strip, but sometimes it really does feel like this is two different strips between the space stuff and the Earth stuff.